Day 5 - Following God's lead
Scripture focus: This is God's Word on the subject: "As soon as Babylon's seventy years are up and not a day before, I'll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I'll listen. When you come looking for me, you'll find me. Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I'll make sure you won't be disappointed." God's Decree. "I'll turn things around for you. I'll bring you back from all the countries into which I drove you"—God's Decree—"bring you home to the place from which I sent you off into exile. You can count on it." Jeremiah 29:10-14 (The Message)
Soon it will be the season when I leave my work several times a week in the late afternoon in search of a lacrosse field. It won't be just any field, it'll be the one where my boy will be warming up. I'll take my place in the bleachers (if we're lucky and the field has them). I'll arrive early - I love to watch the pre-game rituals. I'll unfold my very expensive but appropriately logoed stadium chair, whip out a good book and try to concentrate on the latest word on the topics I'm passionate about - God, people who are hurting, and stories about how these two things intersect. But I will struggle to concentrate. This will be the last season I ever take this particular position in the arena - mom-in-watching.
I have experienced some of my most profound worship experiences sitting in this place. Long before the other parental units arrive, alone and solitary in my seat as watchful guardian of a team of boys - several of whom I watched learn this game as fifth graders, the leaves blossoming in the trees that seem to stand watch around most fields and the sky awash with God light - I marvel at how it must feel to be God, a heavenly Father who watches us as intently as my eyes track the throwing motions and catching skills of a group of kids who think they're here to play a game. But I harbor other notions. I think they're on this field to practice becoming men.
How hard it is for me to let my child play without continually pointing out the significance of each moment! He thinks about scoring and line drills - as if these matter. I think about how the long practices and bruises build his muscles - and I'm not talking biceps. So when I chew over Jeremiah 29, I find comfort in the tenth through fourteenth verses. Because it seems to me that God, too, can't quite leave his children to their own devices. Even as they live with a seventy year exile experience (that was completely God's decision), God can't help but run to the sidelines of the playing field and holler out words of encouragement. This season I'm a senior mom, and I keep telling myself I'm going to behave this year and be an appropriate role model for the rookie moms. No yelling from the bleachers for me! But if, just maybe, an occasion arises where it seems absolutely essential to offer up a word of encouragement, I am chewing on the kinds of words God chose to yell to his children all those many years ago. He reminds his children of his own character and good intentions towards them. He doesn't demand that his children perform. He invites them to call out to him and he guarantees he'll show up.
Recommended reading: Leviticus 17 - 20
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